Look Out My Window
by alyxpoe
Summary: Irene Adler is curled around a thin man's body on the nasty floor of a flat deep on the bad side of London.


_Just something that wormed its way into my brain and wouldn't leave until I wrote it down. I have no excuses._

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Irene Adler is curled around a thin man's body on the nasty floor of a flat deep on the bad side of London. She stumbled upon him when she walked by the open door on her way upstairs to see a client. He's a smidge younger than her but you would never know it by the lines etched into his face as he fights the effects of the overdose from the inside. When she first looked into the dark, smelly room she truly believed she was looking at a dead body. She had turned away from him just as his skinny body went into a spasm, arching his back off of the sticky floor and pulling a miserable moan from his lips.

She remembers looking out the window into the blackness beyond and considering just going about her business. There was _something_, however, that gave her pause. She's never been the maternal type but this man seemed so vulnerable and _alone_ that she felt it was her duty as a human being to do something for him. She understands those two feelings all too well.

She rushes to his side after the spasm passes, rolling him over in the recovery position. Fluid drains from his mouth and his pulse races in double –time. She pats him down, fingers moving through every pocket on his soiled cargo shorts. She deftly removes a piece of paper from one pocket just as he arches again and gives a blood-curdling scream. A car goes by the window and for an instant the room is bathed in dirty yellow light: enough to read the name _Lestrade_ and a telephone number on the crumpled paper. Another scream pulls her attention back to the young man attempting to sit up; his hands are deep in his ratty, greasy hair. For a second his eyes open, the pupils almost preternaturally large. What whites she can see is shot through with searing red lines; irises the color of which she cannot make out in the fading beams of the headlamp outside. The car moves away into a unknowing, uncaring world.

Irene is incapable of any movement when those eyes, those eyes that are the windows to a soul writhing in a cage of bones that rattle in agony against the burning of the blood within; those eyes pin her to the spot like a butterfly collector pins a new specimen to a board. For an instant, she knows this man can _see_ her. Just as quickly, he slumps to the floor and begins to gag.

She moves to his shoulders, flipping him again to his side so that he doesn't choke on his own bile. After a time, the gagging stops and he seems to sleep. His arms and legs jerk in a macabre dance of a man she is sure must be dying. Such a sad thing to die alone; she cannot allow it. She lies down on the floor behind him, noting that the toes of her red stilettos only reach the back of his knees. She places her palm above his heart: it flutters against its bone bindings like a dying moth caught on the windshield of a double-decker bus. She can feel the thinness of the T-shirt over his angular chest. From experience she can tell there is barely any muscle there: maybe it would be better if he just passed on-at least then he would be out of whatever misery drove him to this place.

The hand holding the little slip of paper starts to fall asleep against the hard wooden floor. She will give him just a moment to either die or live. She counts two hundred seconds just to be sure then stands up to grab the handbag she dropped by the door.

Irene pulls her mobile from her handbag as she drops back to her knees. He is convulsing again, every wasted muscle in his body so tight as if they will break. She quickly dials the number from the paper with one long scarlet fingernail. She speaks quickly in low tones, hoping to disguise her voice enough. She clicks the mobile closed and switches it off, effectively ending the call. She runs a hand across the young man's forehead noting that he is sweating yet clammy to the touch.

"Help is coming." She whispers into one ear, carefully tracing the long neck with one finger. Without a doubt, this was once a beautiful young man. Now he's just a pitiful wreck lying in a puddle of his own bodily fluids. She lays back down against his back, allowing herself a moment of weakness, of fantasy to escape and dance around the room of a future that will never be: a white Pegasus galloping amidst the stars of deepest night, of midnight blue butterflies and white tigers.

Irene curls around the young man, whispering in his ear and reminding him to breathe. The worst seems to be over, though his heartbeat still pounds against his chest. She raises her head from the floor to see the flashing colors of help against the dirty, cracked glass of the window. From here the dirt seems to be dried blood. She waits until she hears the heavy tread of military-type boots on the stairs and then makes her escape silently like the good cat burglar she learned to be so many years ago.

Irene hunches down in the shadows at the top of the stairs and listens to the orders being barked by a man whose thick head of dark hair has just begun to silver at the temples.

"Paramedics, now! Overdose!" More footsteps clatter down the stairs, shaking the entire staircase. Irene remains where she is. She can hear the man's voice, this time speaking loudly, but the voice carries an undercurrent of something else…caring? Fear? She shakes her head, it's beyond her grasp.

"Sherlock! Sherlock stay with me! Stay with me, dammit! You can't do this _now_, Sherlock, not _now._ We will get you through this…hang in there for me. Bloody hell, Sherlock! Hang on…."

Irene skulks away towards the client's door. She knocks softly and steps into the only slightly-neater flat when the door opens for her. She doesn't meet the shorter man's black eyes but keeps her eyes on her shoes as the door closes behind her. She knows from past experience that the windows in this flat are covered, so there's no point in looking for help for herself.


End file.
